lemm

I think the aliens could be a lot sneakier and attempt to hide behind corners more often instead of just hiding behind cover props like they seem to do most of the time. They also need to send scouts and flankers around the outer edges of the map to try and come up behind the Xenonaut force.

At higher difficulties, soldier stat increases could be less uniform so that experienced soldiers excel in one category while they are less remarkable in another. In particular, TU, strength (throwing) and accuracy would be the most critical determinants of a soldier's role.

Yeah, I agree with this. I don't think there would be any hope in these terror missions if the aliens got smart and sent scouts around the edges of the map. I've been fortunate enough to get myopic Androns and Sebellians who just charge towards the dropship when they have numerical superiority. Then again, maybe there should be some terror missions that you aren't mean to win..

Alrighty, I've started a new game on Veteran. I think the geoscape is pretty well balanced at this point, although the missions are still cakewalks (mostly this is due to the predictable combat AI which doesn't hide behind corners or flank). I've gotten up to late January and I've constructed two bases. One has wolf/plasma tech and the other has jackal/laser tech. A million bucks in the bank and everything up to Scimitars, Shrikes, and Corsairs has been researched. I was fortunate enough to get a scout on September 16th this time around. In my last game on Normal difficulty, I got a scout at mid-October. The early scout really forces you to carefully consider your research and production options, since everything is available right away. Giving the player an extra month of nothing but light scouts makes the decision process a lot more straightforward.

Xenonauts II: Horror from the Abyss But seriously, a simple in-browser game based on the Xenonauts air combat minigame would be neat. It would be semi-real-time, but either player could pause the action by pressing space (until the time in his ever-recharging pause bank runs out).

The new "scorched earth" tiles that result from destructed terrain seem to be reducing the accuracy of my snipers to 0%, whereas they don't seem to interfere with the accuracy of assault rifles. The same problem sometimes occurs when snipers aim through UFO doors.

Does anyone know if it's possible to hack a save file to remove a UFO from the Geoscape? There is an inbound landingship that doesn't trigger a base defense mission when it arrives at my base. Instead, the game just hangs indefinitely. I've picked the save file apart in a hex editor and I can identify the bytes that define this UFO, but deleting them messes up the save file and causes a crash.

Yeah, that's about how my game on normal played out, though I think the first scout might have arrived a bit earlier. I don't think that we need so many light scouts.

Same thing happened to me, except it was a landing ship.

I think that they still have enough TUs to shoot if they can see you when you end your turn.

I intercepted a landingship, got it down to 50% health, then I retreated after I ran out of ammo. The landingship landed on my base and the UFO icon turned green, but the base defense mission didn't start. The game just paused.

I get the feeling that aliens are spotting me through walls.

Instead, the grenade sprite just sits there, perpetually spinning.

I was wondering if you (or anyone else who is reading) could upload some savefiles with these experimental builds? Maybe one save game after each new weapon tier is unlocked? I get the feeling that much of the feedback on the forums is biased towards the first couple of months of play, and I think you might get better feedback on the late game if people didn't have to spend an entire day playing after each experimental build release.

Tiny piles of rubble that look like they should provide no cover, but somehow reduce accuracy your by 50%. Alt-tabbing messing up the GUI. Random crashes after you save a game. And the most annoying of all: not being able to target an alien because he's hidden behind a box, and the game thinks you want to target the box instead of the alien!

Condors cost $50,000. Is anyone really losing condors and MiGs to scouts and fighters at such a rate that it puts him out of the game? I think the lesson is that, at least in the early game, you need to keep about 100 k in your bank account for a rainy day. There are usually enough light scouts out there to make a decent profit from successful missions. Anyway, the current 72-hour waiting period for the Condor is fine with me, since it only affects the early game. For the conventional human aircraft, I don't agree with salvaging parts, because it's not necessary and it feels silly. On the other hand, the XCOM craft take forever to build, and alien UFOs can crash land without taking too much damage, so maybe "alien" technology is comparatively crash-resistant which allows some parts to be salvaged. If salvaging parts is still too silly for ya, you could also make each XCOM craft cost marginally less to build, as the engineers in your base become more efficient at the process. For example, the second corsair you make be built in 70% of the time for 50% of the cost, and so forth.

Yes, I've had this issue as well.

Excessive smoke grenade use seems like one of those things you could exploit to fool the AI. There was a good thread about smoke grenades a few months ago. I thought that one of the better suggestions was to make smoke reduce reaction fire tendency while minimally impacting vision or accuracy. Thus, smoke could only be used as temporary concealment for running across open spaces, instead of being used as a cloak of invulnerability like in the original XCOM games. In addition, if the smoke cloud took a couple of turns to fully develop, it would be trickier to use and probably less exploitable.

XComUtil had a neat setting which modified the game so that research on alien technology would progress at a glacial pace unless a captured alien was interrogated. Maybe on higher difficulty levels, the default research pace would be slower, but the research reward granted from captured aliens (in particular, officers) would be higher. In general, I think that the difficulty increase should be prioritized by increasing the number of features that appear at higher difficulty, then by making the AI more challenging, then by making the the enemy units stronger or the new technology more expensive, and then finally by adding more things to kill. Make the game "broader, not longer".

I checked out the new build today. I just wanted to say that the new map looks great, and the Geoscape balance and the game progression is much better than it was in v 18.

Hi, I just started a new game on Normal difficulty (I start a new one every few months just to see how things are going). I've gotten up to laser tech (and I'd be farther along, but I lost my base because the base defense mission wouldn't end. And I defended it against Androns using only ballistic weapons!!! Oh well). Anyways, I think the air combat game so far is fine. Condors were too powerful in v18. Using three condors, I could take down a three-fighter wave without a problem (often flawlessly), and taking down a heavy fighter with two fighter- escorts was not an impossible task either. The smaller alien craft are a lot faster now, and they don't seem to change targets as much. I usually end up getting in a lot more head-to-head situations, although these are still winnable if you time the evasive roll correctly. Conversely, the MiGs are far more usable in dogfights versus fighters. Secondly, I don't see what all the fuss is about losing a Condor. On Normal mode, they are so cheap that you can lose half a dozen; so long as you keep a bit of cash in reserve, one successful UFO recovery will recuperate the loss. Even losing a MiG or two is not a huge deal. I think a lot of people underestimate how forgiving this game can be. Finally, is there anything you can do to make the Air combat a little more interesting? I know that Chris has said that it's just supposed to be a simple minigame, and I agree that there shouldn't be pilot stats or anything like that, but I still think it could be spiced up a little bit while retaining its minimalist element. The biggest bore factor is the repetitive nature of every dog fight. If you're up against a certain combination of enemy craft, you can pull the exact same maneuver every time. Perhaps the maps could have cloud cover, which provides a cloaking effect and screws up missile targeting. Or, interceptors could have double their current ammo capacity, but the missiles only hit half of the time. Any sort of simple mechanic that makes you adjust your tactics on the fly would make air combat just a little more varied.

I neutralized all of the enemies in my base, but the game won't end. I swept through the base about 3 time and I couldn't find any remaining enemies. The only peculiar thing in this mission is that I "replicated" a bazooka by going into my soldier's inventory panel, dragging the bazooka, and then switching soldiers.

He doesn't tie his hair back, either. A laboratory no-no.

Any unit that is standing in a dark location, but has been located, should be visible to the eye so that it doesn't take 30 seconds of searching around to get your crosshair on the right tile.

Pre-ramble: Suggestions: I would like there to be a more tactical element implemented at the Geoscape level at hard and insane. Here is a list of suggestions that could make the geoscape more complex. 1) Make the stakes higher (more bases, more aliens) and lower the default radar range proportionally (e.g., if 3x starting bases, 1/3rd radar area). I think I gave an impression of what this might look like in my previous post. 2) At hard, and certainly at Insane, bring back the fighter squads that ambush your troop transport. If the transport is ambushed, the troops never get killed, though. Instead, the transport is forced to land and all of the Xenonauts get out and hide in the forest or something . Just a mechanism to prevent you from reaching your destination without actually losing soldiers. If you escort your transport with fighters, it doesn't automatically show up in battle (give an option to land it before air combat, perhaps). If you go the single base route, this might result in an inability to reach all terror missions at the beginning of the game because of limited interceptor range (but see suggestion 5b). 3) Make nations more fickle. They are easier to lose, but easier to win back. Perhaps some organizations might not even support the Xenonauts program at the beginning of the game. 4) Air combat missions. Include a few Air combat missions to break up the monotony of repetitive ground combat. On the geoscape, I see a bunch of notifications about alien weather manipulation. What if there were air missions that required you to command your interceptor squad to shoot down some menacing sphere that is causing hurricanes, or some impromptu surface installation that is causing earthquakes? These terror devices would persist longer than terror sites, maybe for a few days or so, but you might not be able to down them with one sortie. The longer they stay up there, and the healthier they are, the more detrimental they are to your rating. Additionally, there are Alien ECM installations that jam your radar if they are close enough to one of your bases. To differentiate these aerial combat missions from normal fighter squads, you could make it so that you also have to deal with different types of stationary turrets. Some of these turrets shoot missiles at you. Some of them have area affects that reduce the mobility of your interceptors and their munitions, or provide a shielding effect to fighters in their radius. Some of them work in tandem to make a giant plasma "wall" through which your interceptors cannot fly, lest they take damage. Perhaps the heavy interceptors could be fitted to carry an air-to-surface munition to take out surface installations, although that would require a bit of artwork. Conversely, there could be some sort of "air defense" mission. Perhaps the alien fighter craft decide to tail a Jumbo Jet that is carrying some diplomat because they want to kidnap him. You have to get your interceptors there and save the day, or else the passenger craft disappears from radar. Although the passenger craft appears on the air combat screen, the aliens don't actually target it. ======================= The following ideas are little more complicated, but I still think they are "simple" enough to include, or at least suggest, although I'd imagine that they've all been suggested and rejected before. 5a) Aircraft carriers and Airstrips. They allow for some combination of refueling, rearming and repairing of your interceptors. They are owned by the sponsor nations. They are only accessible on the Geoscape screen by clicking on the Geoscape icon. Since we're keeping this simple to program, all of your interceptors still need a Xenonauts hangar, even if they happen to be stationed at an airstrip. You can't transfer an aircraft "to" a carrier or an airstrip; they are just meant to be stepping stones to increase the range of your aircraft. If the carrier or airstrip is attacked while your interceptors are stationed there, you have to fight or flee. As the game goes on, carriers and airstrips are slowly destroyed by the aliens. However, you build your own bases to "replace" them. (This is all assuming, of course, that you still start out with only one or two bases on Insane). 5b) As an alternative to carriers and airstrips, you have the option to summon mid-air refuelling points to increase your interceptor range. These are mainly just for the early game to increase your interceptor range. It costs a token fee, maybe $10,000 or so, and the mid-air refuel point appears accessible to you, immediately, for 24 hours. (It never gets attacked, it has infinite fuel, and you can only have one at a time).